XLR8R Podcast 396: Veronica Vasicka - Dekmantel 2015 Festival Edition

The Minimal Wave honcho heads to Amsterdam to regale the fest with her synthetic musings.

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Veronica Vasicka has managed to take a lifelong love of electronically modulated sounds, along with a ardor for playing recorded versions of said sounds, and transform that passion into an impressive, intriguing cottage industry. A collector of vintage synthesizers and drum machines—Roland SH-101! Fricke MFB-501!—the New York–based Vasicka decided to bring her beloved music to the masses in 2003 via East Village Radio's Minimal-Electronik, a show dedicated to for her favored style: old, obscure, spare and often dark. “I had this collection of Dutch magazines from the early '80s," Vasicka explained in a 2009 interview, "and they kept using the terms minimal electronics, new wave, coldwave and a bunch of others. I kind of thought there should be a term that covers all this music, and I thought minimal wave could be it." And with that bit of nomenclature set, her obsession became her career. In 2005, she kicked her similarly-themed label, Minimal Wave, into gear; eventually that became the name of the EVR show as well.

But Vasicka wasn't done yet: In 2008, she launched the Cititrax imprint, a clearinghouse for newer synth-based acts, jacking house, raw techno and the like—and she's developed into something of an evangelist for the music, DJing around the world to spread the sine-wave gospel. She's hitting Amsterdam's Dekmantel festival on August 2—and to get all you party people in the mood, here's a great set from Vasicka herself, brimming with synth touchstones past (the Human League "Being Boiled"," for instance), present (Broken English Club's "Channel 83") and, perhaps, future (Tzusing's "Nonlinear War"). It's a riveting set—we suspect you'll dig it as much as we do.